


crack the shutters

by Bugsquads



Series: sunshine and tuesdays [1]
Category: Ant-Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, F/M, Lotta fluff in here, Post-Endgame, this is just a love letter to the ant fam and I’m not even sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 05:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18685207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugsquads/pseuds/Bugsquads
Summary: ‘There are fireworks for three nights after everyone is returned, lighting up the skies of San Francisco. Scott watches them on his porch, one hand clasped tightly between Hope’s as she leans against him, the other holding onto Cassie. He feels safe and peaceful and like there’s nowhere else in the universe, in all of history, the whole of time and space that he belongs more.’Scott, Hope, and Cassie, after.





	crack the shutters

**Author's Note:**

> So I went to see endgame and then this happened.
> 
> Please excuse any formatting or grammatical errors, I write on an ancient iPhone that wants me dead so some errors are to be expected.

Scott finds Hope again after the battle, after Tony snaps his fingers and saves the universe, after seconds of drawn out silence and heartbreak and disbelief. There are bodiesand glass and mounds of rubble, steel jutting out from the ground, a wall of smoke thick enough to obscure the sunshine. Regardless, he finds her, his eyes meeting hers, and then she’s right in front of him and solid and real and _Hope._ They lose their helmets and his hands find her face, pushing back her hair, cupping her cheeks, thumb sliding down the curve of her nose.

He’s checking. Checking to make sure she’s really real, that she’s whole, that she’s not going to blink out of existence again. But she's as solid as the ground beneath his feet. As permanent as the sun. She smiles at him, and something gives way in his chest so that he can breath again (because he hasn’t taken a deep breath in months. Not since Hope’s voice fell quiet over comms. Definitely not since climbing out of that storage unit.)

“You’re ok. You’re ok,” Scott repeats, unsure whether he’s talking to Hope or himself, asking or confirming. There are tears in his eyes, rendering Hope blurry around the edges.

She doesn’t reply in words, but pulls him close, her lips meeting his. They’re surrounded by destruction, but for a few seconds, Scott is anywhere but here, in fifty other places at once. He’s in Hank’s house, kissing Hope behind a door her father is about to open and discover them, he’s in the ant-man suit by the ocean after Hope saved him from drowning and he’s never been happier to be alive, and Hope kisses him so hard that he sees stars behind his eyelids. He’s at his house, years and light years and worlds ago now, kissing her on the forehead in the diluted sunlight of early morning.

This kiss tastes like salt and fire and iron, there’s someone sobbing to his right, but whilst he’s kissing Hope, Scott’s home. He’s felt it for a long time, that deep comfort in his stomach when they’re together, but he realises right now, on the battlefield, that it’s _home_.

When they break apart, he catalogues her with his eyes, as if he hasn’t done this a thousand times before, hasn’t committed every inch of her to memory.

There was a part of Scott that wondered if he would ever get her back. He kept the belief, it was easier for him than for the others, carrying the weight of missing people for months rather than years. He wonders what carrying that kind of agony in your heart for five years does to a person. Despair is corrosive, he knows from personal experience. But on the battlefield, after the war, after the worst five years in all of human history, the corrosion is halted. Scott buries kisses into Hope’s temple and, in doing so, buries any belief that a world permanently deprived of Hope Van Dyne could continue spinning on its axis.

 

They’re sent home through one of Strange’s portals, an orange fizzing circle which takes them from chaos and noise and smoke to the quiet, sunlit street outside Cassie’s house. Somehow, the wizard knew exactly where in the world Scott needed to be.

“Where are we?” Hope frowns, taking in the trash lined streets, rows of houses with drawn curtains. Scott half expected the street to be alive with parties (but they’ll come later. They have all the time in the world now.) Instead, there’s a backdrop of sirens, distant, in the belly of the city.

“Cassie’s,” Scott nods up to the house in front of them, his hand finding Hope’s, fingers tangling together. He never wants to let go of her. Half gut wrenching fear, half breathtaking relief.

“Cassie!” Hope’s eyes widen, like she’s just remembering, like she can’t quite believe she hasn’t asked about Cassie yet, in the midst of the battle. “Did she… I mean…”

“No,” Scott interrupts, before Hope has to say it. He pushes a stray hair behind her ear, runs a thumb along her cheekbone, mottled with ash, keeps himself grounded. “But she’s fifteen now. Can you believe that? Peanut, _fifteen_?”

“Oh. She’s so big now,” Hope gives a watery smile, fading seconds later. “Half the world is _so much_ older,” Hope realises, a blank expression taking over her face. Scott knows that look personally. He also knows it’s going to take a long time until either of them can really accept this, doesn’t know of a way to speed that up. What he does know is that they can hold each other’s hands on the way through.

“Not me,” Scott assures her, squeezing her hand.

“What? But you weren’t dusted?” Hope looks at him questioningly.

“It’s a long story,” Scott admits, and they’ll be time for it later. For now, he needs to see Cassie. He’s got a lot of catching up to do.

“I should-” Hope pauses as Scott tugs her closer to the house. “I mean I have to-” she gestures down the street, away from here.

“You should come inside. If you want to, I mean,” Scott says it casually, but the truth is he can’t stand the thought of being away from her right now. A part of his brain is convinced that if he’s not looking at her, she’ll turn to dust all over again.

“Don’t you want to be with your family?” Hope asks, eyes flickering to the house.

“ _Yes_ ,” he looks at her pointedly.

 

They talk and hug and cry. Paxton is back too, and once upon a time it would have hurt Scott like hell to see the way Maggie’s body curls into Paxton’s, the way she keeps peppering his face with kisses. But now, he’s just filled with gratitude that she’s got her person back, that her life is complete again. They used to be two broken parts of a relationship, the shipwreck of a family, but now Scott’s confident in calling them friends. Two people who both love Cassie immeasurably, and whose own love has evolved into something new. They’re still a family, just a different shape now, two new players added to the field. They’ve found their happy endings, just not with each other.

Scott and Hope shower and sit in borrowed clothes, sharing an armchair, Hope half in his lap. Scott holds her tight and decides he doesn’t really ever want to let go.

 

Afterwards, they go to Hank and Janet’s, Scott borrowing Maggie’s barely functional SUV, and it takes them three times as long as it should because the streets are so packed. It’s a display of humanity’s strongest emotions, people crying and hugging, families laughing together, couples making out on street corners. None of it feels real. The day the whole wide world got a second chance. Janet makes herbal tea and they sit on the porch, listening to the sound of the ocean, as Scott tells them everything. It feels something like healing.

 

It takes a long time for Scott to adjust to normal life again. Or, the _new_ normal. The world grinds to a halt for a while, but it slowly and surely begins to patch itself up again. The big events are easier to deal with. There are fireworks for three nights after everyone is returned, lighting up the skies of San Francisco. Scott watches them on his porch, one hand clasped tightly between Hope’s as she leans against him, the other holding onto Cassie. He feels safe and peaceful and like there’s nowhere else in the universe, in all of history, the whole of time and space that he belongs more. The day after the fireworks stop, Scott boards a plane with Hope, Janet and Hank, suitcases filled with black clothing, and tries to keep his composure as he watches Tony Stark’s five-year-old fiddling uncomfortably with the collar of her tiny funeral dress.

The big events are easier because emotions are expected. They’re a space for reflection and mourning and joy. And it’s a happy time, undoubtedly, but there’s a deep current of sadness too. Sadness for those who didn’t make it out of the other side. Sadness for the five years lost.

Everyday life is much harder, because there’s only so many times you can stand frozen in line at the grocery store or the bank or the DMV, remembering what it feels like to lose everything, before the people behind you start to talk. It’s harder because Scott has to adjust to the fact that Cassie’s hair tickles his face when they hug now, instead of poking the bottom of his chin. It’s harder because he has to remember to turn right instead of left at the end of the street to pick Cassie up from the high school instead of the elementary school when the world starts to get back to normal. It’s harder because Hope knows what it’s like now, to blink out of existence, and it shows.

It shows in the quiet moments, the lull in conversation, the dead of night. The only way Scott can really get any sleep any more is if Hope’s right beside him, Cassie down the hall. All three of them have nightmares, a unique kind of pain. Sometimes he hears Cassie crying in her sleep, shallow sobs, and when he wakes her up (he _always_ wakes her up, can’t stand the thought of his daughter in pain, even in dreams), the first thing she does is hug him, without fail, like every time she’s seeing him again for the first time in five years. Scott’s nightmares are the same kind he had before everyone was returned. The ones where the dusted are on some horrific alternate plane of reality. The one where Hope spent five years in pain. The one where Cassie was dusted too and he looks for her all over the city, the country, the planet, but she’s blinked out of existence. Hope doesn’t talk about her nightmares. Scott knows she has them because she freezes, barely breathing, as if something so terrible is happening in the dream that she doesn’t even bother fighting it. She wakes up in cold sweats, and tells Scott she’s fine through gritted teeth.

“What was it like?” He asks through the darkness, four a.m flashing on the alarm clock. He’s been too afraid to ask, till this very moment, not wanting Hope to have to remember it if she doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t ask him to clarify the question. “I don’t know. One minute I was here, the next I was gone. And then I was here again. I don’t remember anything else,” that’s the standard answer. The one the dusted keep giving on tv and in blogs and in exclusive stories on the front page of newspapers. But if she doesn't remember, Scott doesn’t know why she’s having nightmares. She never had them before. Not like this.

“Nothing at all?” He pries slowly, carefully. Hope wriggles a little. Scott turns to face her, studies her side profile and the way her hair makes a halo on the pillow.

“No.”

“Ok. Ok. You know I’m here if you need to talk about anything,” he reminds her, and she nods.

The silence stretches out again. The wind dies down outside. The bedroom starts to get a little lighter, and Scott can picture the sky turning inky blue outside.

“It was lonely,” Hope says, around five. “Just...lonely. Not for five years, but for _some_ length of time. And it doesn’t make sense, because I know _scientifically_ what happened, and I know that I shouldn’t have been able to feel lonely, or afraid. But it was like I was the only person in existence. Like I was floating in the middle of a giant ocean, no ships in sight. Not even a crappy door, like in Titanic.” Her voice shakes a little, at the end, and Scott’s pretty sure he feels a crack appearing in his heart. If Thanos wasn’t already dead, this would be enough to get Scott out of bed, this second, tracking him down to finish off single handedly. But he’s gone, blinked out of existence. The bad is gone, and Scott is left with all of the light in his life.

“You know Luis has a personal vengeance against that door for killing Dicaprio?” Scott comments, and then Hope’s laughing softly, turning to face him.

“He really loves that man.”

“It’s getting worrying,” Scott says, and he’s laughing too, peals of laughter filling the room, matching Hope’s, long after anything they’ve said stops being funny.

“C’mere,” Scott pulls Hope closer, once they’re quiet again, fingers tangling in the back of his old grey t-shirt she’s wearing to sleep, breathing in the familiar smell of her hair. “I’m really sorry you had to go through that. I’d change it if I could. I’d go back, and pick you out of time. I’d kill baby Thanos. But apparently, that’s not how time travel works _at all_ ,” he says bitterly. “But we’ll get through this, ok? We’ll pick ourselves up again. Humans are annoyingly resilient like that.”

“We are,” Hope sniffs, and there are tears stuck in her eyelashes.

“And you never have to feel lonely, ever again, ok? I promise,” he weaves his fingers through her hair, focusing on her steadying breaths.

“Ok. It’s ok. I’m ok,” she assures Scott.

“Well you’re pretty much the strongest person I know, besides me, so that figures,” Scott tells her, closing his eyes, finally feeling sleep wrapping itself around his brain.

“You sure got cocky without me around.”

“Ha. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

They drift to sleep. Neither one of them realises the magnitude of what they’ve said for the first time. It feels too right to freak out over.

 

(In three hours, they’ll wake up to the most beautiful sunshine of the year. Scott will pack a breakfast picnic, ignoring Cassie’s insistence that ‘that’s not a thing’, and the three of them will take it to the park, sit in the warmth drinking orange juice straight out of the carton.)

 

The nightmares are not Scott’s only reminder of the snap, of the dark days. There’s the fact that Cassie’s elementary school best friend, the girl she shared every secret with, was snapped, has returned a wide-eyed ten-year-old, frozen like a photograph. There’s the fact that Scott’s favourite bagel place has closed down, the owner retired and moved on. By some cruel twist of fate, it’s a Baskin Robbins now, as if that company in particular has a personal vendetta against Scott. There's the fact that one of Hope’s friends was snapped, and when she came back, her mom had passed, no chance of saying goodbye. There's a metric ton of reasons to be sad about the snap.

There are also reasons to be happy with the universe. Scott starts to count them off on his fingers but stops when he runs out of hands. The oceans are cleaner now, the rainforests a little greener, near-extinct species all around the globe springing back to life. And Scott thinks that people maybe love harder now, that people take better care of each other’s hearts and take more chances too. It feels like maybe there’s more to live for, now they’ve been shown the alternative to that, got to know death up close and personal. None of the good makes up for the fact that the snap happened, not even close. But out of the bad, people find reasons to carry on.

 

Catching up with life, which marched on without Scott, takes far too long. At first he goes hours thinking he’s caught up, then weeks, then an entire month. Inevitably, there’s always something new that makes him feel about ninety years old. There’s Cassie’s new favourite tv show, one of the few to start airing during the lost years, the weird brightly coloured shoes half the teenagers Scott sees seem to be wearing, or the new phone model which Maggie keys Scott’s new number into. The biggest shock comes on a Monday night, when Cassie’s back at school, when the pieces of life are beginning to slot themselves back into place, sticking with cement.

“Dad,” Cassie’s leaning against the doorframe as Scott plays games on his phone, half asleep, waiting for Hope to get home from her parents’ house.

He’s pretty sure Hope lives here now, though neither of them have voiced it. Scott’s afraid that if he brings it up, Hope will think he means he doesn’t _want_ her to live there. Which he does, desperately. But she’s started calling it home now, and they’re sharing a tube of toothpaste and the pomegranate flavoured shower gel she bought at the corner store.

“Yeah?” Scott pauses his game, sits up a little straighter. He still does a double take every time he sees Cassie, expecting someone a head smaller.

“Um...can Amy come over for dinner tomorrow?” Cassie asks, taking a particular interest in pulling up her cat-patterned socks.

“Is she a friend from school?”

“She’s...well Amy’s my, uh, girlfriend,” Cassie says, voice small and un-Cassie like.

Scott almost drops his phone, playing it off like he’s just putting it down enthusiastically. Months ago, Cassie was ten, and she still played with dolls, and she thought kissing was _gross._ How, in barely the span of a blink, is she old enough to be _dating someone_? Scott feels guilty every single day for missing more of Cassie’s life. He missed enough milestones while he was in prison, thought he’d at least have ‘older kid’ firsts to look forward to.

“Dad? Say something?”

“Peanut. Of course she can come over,” Scott stands up to hug Cassie, feeling her sigh of relief as her chin rests on his shoulder. He can freak out about missing this later. Right now, Cassie needs him. “She’s welcome anytime. How long have you guys been together?”

“Almost six months,” she says, as Scott releases her, holding her by the shoulders instead. He might not have been around for it, but he’s incredibly proud at the kind of adult Cassie is turning into. “We met in school. She sat next to me in art class.”

“Art class huh?”

“Yeah. We both sucked at it,” Cassie smiles.

“What’s she like?” Scott wants to know, watches Cassie’s eyes light up as she tells him all about Amy, and the way her eyes crinkle when she smiles, about her terrible jokes and weird sense of humour and kind heart.

“Hey, Cass?” Scott asks later, when they’re bookends on the couch, letting Cassie paint his toenails a deep shade of purple as she grumbles at him to stop fidgeting. “Why didn’t you tell me about Amy before?” He's terrified that Cassie was anything but excited about telling him.

“Uh… mom said we should ease you in. Not overwhelm you with new information. But it felt like I was lying to you,” Cassie frowns.

“You know that I’m...I just want you to be happy, right?”

Cassie looks at him for a long moment, a half smile playing on her lips that Scott’s sure he’s seen somewhere before (he’ll realise later that it stares back at him in the mirror, that it’s the same one on his face in the most recent selfie he took of himself and Hope, two days ago). “I really missed you, dad.”

“I’m sorry I left.” Sorry doesn’t cover it. Doesn’t scratch the surface.

“It’s not your fault. And you’re back now. That’s all that matters.”

 

Scott spends the next day preparing for Amy’s visit. He tries on three outfits before settling on one he feels is right, and spends over an hour walking around the grocery store with Hope, picking out appropriate ingredients for Scott’s very first time as host of a ‘meet the parents’ dinner. It’s strange to be doing something as normal as walking around the store with Hope, asking her opinion on which brand of ketchup to buy and watching her manoeuvre the cart amongst the fruit stands. It’s got a faulty wheel so that she keeps accidentally pushing it into Scott, one time so hard that he almost falls into the ice cream freezer.

“What should I say to her?” Scott asks Hope at the checkout. “Should I give her a dad spiel? Should I tell her to take care of my baby? I don’t know what I would even _include_ in a dad spiel. I’m supposed to have years to prepare for this! Are there books on this? Do you think there’s a wikihow?”

“I think it’s a little too niche for wikihow,” Hope snorts, fumbling in her purse for dollar bills. “Just don’t be like my dad was.”

“No offence to Hank, but I don’t think it’ll be hard to be the _opposite_ of him when it comes to my daughter’s love interests.”

“Exactly. Just do that and you’ll do great,” Hope laughs. “Just be yourself. Cassie’s fifty percent you, and Amy loves _her_. So I’m sure she’ll like you just fine.”

“You’re right, I’m pretty great. I can do this,” Scott paths himself up.

“Did I say you were pretty great?”

“You definitely did.”

 

Amy is smaller than Cassie, with red hair tumbling down her back and a nose piercing in the shape of a ladybug.

“Hi. Hi. Amy. I’m Scott. Cassie’s dad. Scott Lang. Mr Lang. I-” Scott shrugs, pausing as Hope places a hand on his arm, snapping him out of it. Scott puts his own hand on her lower back, thanking her silently.

“This is my dad,” Cassie laughs.

“It’s so good to finally meet you. I’ve heard like a thousand stories about you by now,” Amy beams, fiddling nervously with the straps of her backpack. “You must be Cassie’s step-mom?” She looks up at Hope expectantly.

“Uh…” it’s Hope’s turn to not know quite what to say.

“This is Hope. My dad’s girlfriend,” Cassie supplies.

“Oh,” Amy blushes. “Well, I’ve heard a lot about you too. I’ve wanted to meet you both for a really long time.”

“Well, we definitely live up to the hype,” Scott promises, and he hasn’t been so excited to get to know someone for a long time.

 

This is just the first of many new things which Scott encounters when it comes to suddenly being the parent of a teenager, and Hope’s right, there are no wikihows for any of it, just a kid who grew up in five hours. But she’s still very much _Cassie_ , still the same kid Scott left in 2018, in every way that matters. She’s still unbelievably kind and smart, and Scott can still make her laugh so hard that milk comes out of her nose. He’s pretty sure that as long as she has four parental figures who love and try their best for her, she’ll grow up to be wonderful.

 

It’s months before a solid routine settles itself over Scott’s life. It only really happens when Luis gets back from Mexico, after spending a few months with his family. He was amongst the dusted, leaving behind most of his family, and Scott misses him during the months he’s gone, but he gets it completely, wants his friend to take all the time he needs. When he gets back, Luis is more ready to jump into Ex-Con than ever before, certain that demand for security systems is at an all time high. It’s nice to have an office to go to every day, a schedule to stick to. It’s nice to eat lunch surrounded by his three best friends. It’s nice to talk about business proposals and study blueprints and attend meetings in offices with water jugs on the tables. It feels terribly normal, which usually Scott sees as a blessing, a way to sink back into a life to be proud of.

Sometimes it’s stifling, feels like playing pretend. Like half the people sitting around the tables in meetings aren’t a whole lot older than they should be. Or, more accurately, half are _younger_ than they should be. Like they’re all pretending they’re not all trying to guess which of them were snapped and which of them weren’t. (And you can tell, Scott figures, if you look hard enough. The ones who weren’t snapped know what it’s like to lose everything. They hug harder and look at their loved ones like they’re trying to memorise them. They never leave without saying goodbye.) Like people didn’t die in the battle. Like everything’s ok again, when it’s the furthest thing from that.

But a routine fights it's way in all the same. It struggles in on family breakfasts and kissing Hope goodbye as she leaves to go work with Hank. It’s spending the day at the crappy old desk Scott is still, somehow, forced into. It’s the slightly terrible dinners that neither he nor Hope are very good at cooking. Life marches on in Saturday barbecues with Maggie and Paxton, Sunday afternoons with Hank and Janet. It sparkles with fireworks and getting back to training (or, as Hope likes to call it, Scott getting his ass handed to him), watching Cassie’s new soccer team, melty ice cream with Cassie and Amy and a rain storm which confines them to the house for two days. Most of all, Scott’s new life is defined by Cassie and Hope.

Hope still never officially moves in, but lists Scott’s address on all the paperwork as she signs up to get her life back. New bank accounts and electoral registers and store loyalty cards. Their mail sits in one stack on the dresser by the front door, their laundry waits to be folded in a basket on top of the dryer, they paint the kitchen Hope’s favourite colour. Scott’s days are marked out by kisses. Good morning and welcome home and today’s dinner is actually edible and I missed you and good luck on your big presentation this morning and goodnight and your eyes look especially pretty today and I love you I love you I love you I love you.

 

Scott knows he wants to spend the rest of his life with Hope, figured that out a while ago. That wasn’t any kind of sudden, shocking realisation. Rather, Hope was snapped back to life, and Scott knew for a fact that he couldn’t live without her again. Scott deciding he wants to _marry_ Hope is a process. He never thought that he would want to get married again after Maggie, couldn’t imagine himself falling in love again or risking heartbreak. The first time the thought enters Scott’s head it’s early Autumn, one of the last barbecues with Maggie and Paxton of the year, and Scott’s sitting with Paxton and talking about nothing in particular, glancing periodically over to the opposite side of the garden, where Hope, Maggie, Cassie and Amy are sitting in a circle, talking over cans of soda. Hope throws her head back to laugh at something Amy says, the sunlight catching in her hair just so as it sets, a backdrop of slow, poppy music from a decade ago or more, something familiar from before the snap. Scott’s chest constricts like Thor’s hit him with a bolt of lightning, and he’s not sure he’s ever been so in love before, has flashes of them growing old together, sitting on a rocking chair on their porch and watching the world go by. In the image, there’s a ring on her finger. Paxton pauses mid-sentence and shoots Scott a knowing look. Scott blames it on the sun in his eyes.

Things culminate at Christmas time, helping Janet and Hank put decorations up inside their house. There are cardboard boxes filled with dusty decorations, and Scott sits on the bare wood floor across from Janet, picking through mangled tinsel and smashed strings of lights to find the functional decorations for Hope and Hank to begin hanging. That’s where he finds the tiny black box, a little battered and squished, heavy in Scott’s palm. He peels it open carefully, assuming it's a particularly precious Christmas ornament. A ring falls into his hand. It’s a rose gold colour, a little crooked, jade green gemstones of mismatched sizes at the forefront. It looks a little messy, and very beautiful.

“Oh, I’d forgotten about that!” Janet holds out a hand for the ring, holding it up to the light when Scott presses it into her palm. “This was my mom’s. My dad had it handmade from some… some beach glass he found on a beach they vacationed on,” she smiles fondly. “I don’t know what it was doing in there.”

“Sea glass?” Scott’s smiling too, images of Hope’s grandparents (who, for a reason Scott can’t explain, look suspiciously like Hope and himself), combing a beach for tiny pieces of glass.

“Yeah. Come to think of it, Hope always used to love this ring when she was little,” Janet comments, and there’s a glint in her eye.

“It’s a really pretty ring,” Scott agrees.

“You should take it,” Janet holds it between thumb and forefinger, reaching towards Scott.

“What? Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. You might need it,” and she’s got the same knowing expression on her face as Paxton did at the barbecue all those months ago. “Someday, anyway. Or, you might not. Either way, you better take it, it’s just gathering dust here,” Janet plays it off like it’s no big deal. Like it’s not the most important piece of jewellery Scott will ever lay eyes on.

Scott takes it, rolls it around in his hand, feeling the weight of it at every angle. He’s holding it close to his eyes when Hank walks in, freezing at the sight of Scott with a ring.

“Oh! Uh, this isn’t what it looks like,” Scott grimaces, convinced that Hank will disapprove of that ring going anywhere near Hope, as long as it’s coming from Scott.

Scott places the ring carefully back into the box, listening to the sound of his blood pumping in his ears as he waits for Hank to say something. Anything. Tell him he’s making a mistake or ask him to leave or, or-

“It’s about time that ring had a good home,” Hank grumbles eventually, and moves past Scott to pick up a string of newly sorted and tested lights.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Janet agrees.

“And about time you did something instead of just making gooey eyes at each other,” Hank adds. “Just do it nicely. Don’t… Scott it up.”

“ _Scott_ it up?” Scott’s offended for a second, before the realisation sinks into his bones that this is happening. He’s really going to ask Hope to marry him. “I won’t, I won’t,” he promises, unable to contain his smile.

 

So, he takes the ring. It burns a hole in his pocket for far too long before he does something about it. Through the first, difficult, Christmas where Scott isn’t quite sure what to buy Cassie because the gifts he had planned for the ten year old he lost aren’t compatible at all with the fifteen year old he gained. The ring sits in his pocket through an achingly long January, colder than he remembers them being before. Scott and Hope survive with a collection of sweaters, and weekends curled up together watching old movies. January melts into February, into Scott’s attempt at a fancy dinner for Valentine’s Day, only a little burned around the edges, and although he convinced himself that it's the perfect day to do this, he’s _un_ convincing himself ten minutes later because no way, it’s the most cliche day of the year. Hope deserves something special.

The ring is in his pocket when Bruce comes into town to promote a new Hulk brand of candy, spending a Friday evening getting tacos with Scott and Hope. It’s always strange, seeing another one of the avengers (and Scott still has to punch himself because _oh my god I’m an avenger now_ ). They all shared one horrific experience, bore the weight of loss together, almost didn’t make it out the other side, and now they’re doing their best to piece things back together. It brings all of the pain back up, but makes Scott feel more grateful than ever to be alive. Like to completely heal the broken bones of the past, he needs to break them again first so they’ll set right.

But still, the ring stays in the back pocket of whatever pair of jeans he’s wearing that day. Winter turns into spring, marked with bright green buds on the trees, lighter evenings, the ducklings Scott passes on the lake on his daily run. Cassie gets an A in a big math test, Clint comes to the city on a road trip with his family, Cassie and Lila almost burn the house down baking brownies, Ex-Con get their biggest contract yet. Seconds and minutes and hours and days which, when laid end to end, make up a life.

The ring sits in Scott’s pocket. The one year anniversary of the dusted being returned looms. Everyone grows a little quieter and more emotional. There are fireworks again. It starts to feel like the universe has come out of the other side of this, the whole of it growing new buds like the towering sycamore tree at the end of Scott’s street.

 

He knows he’s ready to ask Hope when he starts to talk to Cassie about it. She might be fifteen but she’s still a kid, and he’s not going to do anything that might cause instability in her life. So he wants to check, before he asks, that she’s ok with it.

“Hey, Peanut?” Scott’s standing in the doorway one Friday evening, Cassie lounging on the couch, taking up all the space with her long limbs. Hope’s safely out of the house, and the whole evening echoes the Monday months ago when Cassie has told Scott about Amy.

“Yeah dad?” Cassie’s frowning at her laptop, balanced precariously on one knee as she works on an assignment. He’s not sure where she got that from, a desire to do homework on a Friday. Maybe it’s Hope’s influence.

“Can I talk to you for a sec?” Scott perches on the arm of the couch.

“Oh no,” Cassie freezes. “This isn’t like… the _talk_ is it? Because mom had that with me like four years ago. And it’s different for me anyway because I’m dating a girl-”

“No, no,” Scott laughs, “it’s not that. Neither of us wants that.”

“Thank God,” Cassie breaths an overly enthusiastic sigh of relief and goes back to her laptop.

“I wanted to ask you something about… about Hope actually,” Scott studies Cassie’s face for a reaction as she looks up at him expectantly.

“What about her?”

“You like her right? You like that she’s a part of our life?” He feels stupid for asking.

Hope has been a part of Cassie’s life since she was seven years old, on and off. They do science projects together and Scott regularly walks into the living room to find them binge watching something on Netflix, a pint of ice cream between them. Last weekend Hope took Cassie to buy new soccer cleats and when they got home they didn’t stop laughing about some new in joke until the pizza Scott ordered showed up.

“Dad, of course! I love Hope. Why are you asking?” She's concerned now, shifting into a more upright position.

He’s asking because if Cassie _had_ secretly hated Hope and not wanted to voice it for fear of upsetting Scott, and had then grown up into some repressed, sad adult, Scott would never forgive himself. He’d known there was an approximately 0.001% chance of that happening, but as Cassie’s father, and one of her strongest advocates, it’s his job to check. He’s asking because he wants to know that Cassie wants him to marry Hope, that she’ll be excited about it.

“I’m asking because I...because I’m going to...I’m planning on asking Hope to marry me,” Scott gets the words out, eventually. He hasn’t told anyone yet, hasn’t said the words out loud. Saying them out loud makes them real, tangible. But there’s none of the all consuming fear that usually comes with saying something big out loud. There’s no negative emotions in sight. Instead, there’s a sense of peace, and Scott knows without a shadow of a doubt that he’s doing the right thing.

“Dad!” Cassie claps her hands over her mouth, beaming. “You are?”

“Yeah. I am. I’m gonna do it.”

Cassie squeals a little, pushing her laptop to the couch cushions and standing up to hug Scott. “That’s the _best_ news.”

“Do you think she’ll say yes?” Scott asks, nerves pooling in his stomach.

“Of course. You’re Scott and Hope. Ant-man and the Wasp.” Cassie says it like it’s inevitable. Suddenly, Scott can’t believe he’s waited so long. Wasted months with the ring burning a hole in his pocket. He’s considering calling Hope right now and asking her to meet him at the courthouse. They could be _married_ by now, if he’d asked sooner. It’s all he wants in the universe right now.

 

Scott has big plans for Saturday. He’s going to make pancakes for breakfast, spend the bulk of the day with Janet, Hank, Cassie and Hope redecorating Janet and Hank’s kitchen (the kind of ordinary life project that’s so normal it’s comforting, these days), and then later he’ll take Hope to dinner at their favourite place in Chinatown. As the sun sets, he’s going to take her to a quiet part of the bay, right to the water’s edge, and ask her to marry him.

He absolutely should have counted on Hope being smart enough to figure everything out.

Hope gets home late, crawls into bed next to a half asleep Scott, her hair still wet from the shower, skin warm and soft. She’s wearing one of his old shirts again, a light blue Morrisey one this time, and she presses her head into his shoulder, hair turning his white t shirt grey at the seam, dampening his skin beneath it. He doesn’t mind, pulls her in closer and presses a kiss to her forehead. Still, almost a year on, this is the only way he feels completely calm. Under the same roof as Hope and Cassie, knowing they’re both safe. Knowing that they’re both happy, that they both love him. He’d trade anything for that.

Scott slides one hand under the hem of her shirt, thumb resting on her hip bone. “Go to sleep,” he tells her, feeling her feet tangle with his. “Big day tomorrow.”

“Big day?” Her voice is crackly with tiredness, rough around the edges.

“Mmhmm,” he’s too tired to suspect he might have said something out of place.

“Why would that be?” Hope teases, “are you going to ask me to marry you?”

Scott freezes, the cogs in his brain solid with sleep. “Uh-” he's going to laugh, or deny it, or tell her she wishes, or any combination of the three, but his voice isn’t cooperating.

“I found the ring weeks ago,” Hope whispers, and there’s a smile in her voice.

“What? No! I hid it so well!”

“It fell out of your jeans pocket after Cassie threw that water balloon at you last month,” she admits, and Scott’s really starting to wake up now.

If Hope _knows_ , then she’s had time to think about it. She’s had time to weigh up her options, evaluate her life. Somewhere in her head, right now, is an answer. A yes or a no. Three letters, maximum. Scott thinks the words should work harder if they’re going to be so life changing as this.

“I didn’t know how to ask you. Nothing felt special enough,” Scott admits, pulling Hope even closer. If she’s about to say no, she doesn’t want to marry him, wants to break up instead, then he wants a final moment of this. Of his world being complete.

“You could ask me right now. And, hypothetically, it would be perfect.” Hope suggests in a whisper.

“Now? Right now?” His heart’s hammering out of his chest.

“Hypothetically.”

“If I were to hypothetically ask you, would you hypothetically say yes?”

“Why don’t you try it and see?”

Scott takes a deep breath, and this isn’t the first time he’s done this, but it’s the time that seems to matter most. He looks down at Hope and sees through time, sees their first meeting, first kiss, the first time they fought side by side and every time since. Scott sees every sleepy morning and the time they drunk too much of the red wine Maggie bought them and danced around the kitchen barefoot, sees Cassie and Hope sitting side by side to watch the fireworks on the front porch. He sees their future, sees Hope with a wreath of wildflowers tangled in her hair, holding her hand and promising to love her forever, sees her standing on the beaches of far off lands, sees the crease between her eyes when she frowns and the light dancing in them when she smiles, sees the way she looks when she’s exhausted or sick or heartbroken or overjoyed. He wants it all. Wants to celebrate with her on the best days and hold her whilst they cry together on the worst. Wants to sit next to her in the kitchen, in pajamas in the early morning sunrise, drinking strong coffees, and beside her at midnight in bars that no one likes to admit are too loud, drinking something much stronger. Wants their whole big wide future, starting right now on this average Friday night in this remarkable universe.

“Hope Van Dyne,” Scott pulls back to look at her properly, cups her face, sees the look she gave him in the homemade mini drive in theatre with Cassie one thousand years ago. “Will you marry me?”

Hope kisses him then, fiery yet soft, urgent but loving, her hands on his neck and in his hair and trailing down his chest, and Cassie was right, they’re two parts of something, Scott and Hope, ant-man and the Wasp. The city outside is quiet, as if San Francisco decided to call it a night a little early today to give them some peace. There’s a tap dripping in the bathroom. The air is cool. Hope’s ‘yes’ is whispered against Scott’s lips. They’re going to be just fine.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Please please please come and yell with me about these nerds!!! I’m on tumblr @jakelovesamy and Twitter @bugsquads


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